DIY Bioreactor

avatar
(Edited)

A bioreactor is a deceptively simple device.


At Ligaya Garden, I do a lot of DIY. It saves money, often recycles waste and keeps my brain alive. I'll be sharing a DIY project with you from time to time here on Hive DIY.

What is a bioreactor? It sounds complicated, but it’s really a two dollar word for something that pumps air through algae. There’s a few designs on YouTube, this is my home brew variation of those.

On a large scale, bioreactors can help scrub CO2 and some pollutants from the air and return oxygen and a whole lot of algae for food, fertilizer of biofuels.

The air is pumped via a compressor, through a solution containing water, algae and nutrients. The algae takes the CO2 and uses it for growth and in return, gives off oxygen which is released back into the surrounding air.

We have ours connected to our solar setup so the power to run it is free.

I made one recently, a very simple proof of concept and thought I’d share it here in case you want to try your own.


How to make your own bioreactor

You will need:

  • transparent container or two
  • aquarium hose (and connections if you want more than one tank
  • iron or steel weight
  • aquarium air pump
  • algae
  • water
  • soluble nutrients

That’s it. Pretty simple. Here’s how it goes together:

The water and algae go into the transparent container. I used two 11 litre plastic spring water containers.

Attach one end of the aquarium hose to the weight and lower it into the water so the weight is at the bottom of the container. This holds the hose at the bottom of the tank. Also, as it rusts, the weight releases small amounts of iron into the water to feed the algae.

Attach the other end of the hose to the pump, turn on the power and watch the bubbles!

Add a little of your favourite soluble fertiliser. For ours here, pretty well anything works – urine, seaweed liquid, Osmocote

That’s it, you’ve got a bioreactor!

Of course, it can get as complicated as you like. You can:

  • make a loop of hose at the bottom of the tank to distribute the air more evenly
  • experiment with different air-stones
  • play around with the airflow
  • vary the shape of the containers to increase the time the air is kept in the solution
  • experiment with different types of algae
  • bounce light onto the container, or use powered lighting
  • use multiple containers, like you see in ours

If anyone can suggest a way to measure the amounts of CO2 going in and O2 coming out using home brew technology, I’d love to learn from you. Maybe I’ll investigate if it is possible to do with an Arduino

Bioreactors…fun for all the family!




VhEcYhIfkj.png








}

2bP4pJr4wVimqCWjYimXJe2cnCgnKs3wptdZXs8iWD4.webp

VhEcYhIfkj.png



0
0
0.000
6 comments
avatar

The people doing V2K want me to believe it is this lady @battleaxe Investigate what she has been up to for 5 years. Its the next step to stopping this. Make her prove where she has been for 5 years or where she is now. She is involved deeply with @fyrstikken and his group. Her discord is Battleaxe#1003. I cant say she is the one directly doing the v2k. Make her prove it. They have tried to kill me and are still trying to kill me. I bet nobody does anything at all. Make @battleaxe prove it. I bet she wont. They want me to believe the v2k in me is being broadcasted from her location. @battleaxe what is your location? https://ecency.com/fyrstikken/@fairandbalanced/i-am-the-only-motherfucker-on-the-internet-pointing-to-a-direct-source-for-voice-to-skull-electronic-terrorism

0
0
0.000
avatar

That's awesome! Where did you get the algae from?
!LUV

0
0
0.000
avatar

I get it from local ponds. Still trying to work out the most effective. If I can get it right, I can make chook food or fuel from it eventually,

0
0
0.000
avatar


Thank you for sharing this great #cannabis, #gardening, #gaming content, You have been manually Upvoted by @skylinebuds, Feel free to come share all your gardening content in the hivegarden Community

You can hang out Cannabis & Crypto Garden and Share and Talk #cannabis,#gardening, #strain-reviews, #growing, #crypto, #play2earn, and So much more

You can use THIS POST to learn how to format your post even better, if you don't know markdown it is a great read

Did you know you can now delegate weedcash token to @skylinebuds-weed and receive Tribe Tokens, Weed, and swap.hive for helping build this curation project.

0
0
0.000